Building a Virtual World from Berlin: Smeet CEO Sebastian Funke (Part 2)

Sramana: How long did it take you to realize that what you had set out to do was not going to happen? Sebastian Funke: Way too long. We spent a lot of time trying to optimize the product by adding features and more capabilities. We never really looked at what the users wanted. We never

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Building a Virtual World from Berlin: Smeet CEO Sebastian Funke (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Sebastian Funke is the CEO and co-founder of Smeet, a free browser-based 3-D social chat game. He co-founded Smeet in 2006 directly out of college. Sebastian was born in East Germany and moved to Berlin when he was nine. Today Smeet is based in Berlin with

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How To Build A Profitable Gaming Company: Kenny Rosenblatt, CEO of Arkadium (Part 7)

Sramana: What are the demographics of the people who play your games? Kenny Rosenblatt: Our largest demographic is women 35 and older who live in the United States. Sramana: There are some women-focused ad networks like Glam Media. Have you experienced those networks? Kenny Rosenblatt: We have talked with Glam and others, but the deal

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How To Build A Profitable Gaming Company: Kenny Rosenblatt, CEO of Arkadium (Part 6)

Sramana: Are you applying any other type of monetization model, such as advertising? Kenny Rosenblatt: We recognized that 97% of the users would only play free, so we do put advertisements in front of those users so we receive some compensation. Sramana: What kind of strategies do you use for advertising? Kenny Rosenblatt: We focus

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How To Build A Profitable Gaming Company: Kenny Rosenblatt, CEO of Arkadium (Part 5)

Sramana: What was the result of making a strategic shift to develop gaming applications following a B2B strategy? Kenny Rosenblatt: We saw explosive growth. We had four people and now have over 80.

How To Build A Profitable Gaming Company: Kenny Rosenblatt, CEO of Arkadium (Part 4)

Sramana: By this time you were a full year into bootstrapping the company, you had already had a complete development cycle failure, and now you have to give away the only game you have been able to bring to market because people don’t want to pay for it. How did you survive? Kenny Rosenblatt: We

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How To Build A Profitable Gaming Company: Kenny Rosenblatt, CEO of Arkadium (Part 3)

Sramana: How long did it take you to get the first game out the door? Kenny Rosenblatt: I took us six months, and it was a disaster of an experience. We had never worked with offshore development companies before, and we had never designed a game before. I knew we were in trouble when our

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How To Build A Profitable Gaming Company: Kenny Rosenblatt, CEO of Arkadium (Part 2)

Sramana: What is the genesis of Arkadium? Kenny Rosenblatt: In 2000 a woman joined On2 to run the music version of the system. Her name was Jessica Rovello. I saw her once and fell in love with her. We started dating, and she was an entrepreneur as well. She had created the Blair Witch Project

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